SEPTEMBER IS HERE! last days to enjoy the terraces, those summer plans, lunch and dinner in the countryside, outdoor concerts, lazing on the beach... To lighten this difficult transition, we propose, as every month, our event selection.

Still time tovisit this exhibition so interesting of Vallotton, Swiss painter and engraver active until the early twentieth century and member of the Nabis, a group that was influenced by Gaugin painting, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh.

Today, no one questions to photography, but not always considered it art. By May or June of 1939 Dora Maar and Picasso decided to do something different with photography, based on a new concept. From a giant format work on contemporary tragedia, the Guernica. Maar testimony the creative process, but she wanted to go further, to find the essence of avant-garde art. These pictures caused great impact, perhaps by the very incomprehensibility of the work for its time. These photographs accompany the picture after its exhibition in the Spanish pavilion at the International Exhibition of 1937 in Paris. So, it travelled to Denmark, England and USA. The photographs made ​​the picture somewhat intangible, unique.

The avant-garde photography born in the U.S. Alfred Stieglitz, an American of German-Jewish origins, departed from pictorialism to then saturate in direct photography. In his tour of Europe, during his youth portraied the habitants of the Alps, their costumes, farmers in Netherland or the nature of the Black Forest in Germany, but on his return to the U.S., is a new way of doing photography, seeks to redefine the object, the '' authentic''. He edited the journal American Amateur Photographer and subsequently the Camera Notes. He opened his own gallery in NY, which would become the gateway for Picasso, Braque and Brancusi and his photographs were enriched with collages, frames related to Japanese prints elements.

One of his followers was Edward Weston, which will document the status of the American field. His photography is straightforward, was coming by to objects that are no longer what they were and become atmospheric and textures suggestions.

One Monday again, we meet you in version 2.0. In today's post we will approach to the figure of Rafael Guastavino, Spanish architect of the late nineteenth century settled in New York where imported Spanish architectural tradition.

Rafael Guastavino, born in Valencia but he emigrated to the U.S. Based in Barcelona since 1861, he studied at the School of Master Builders, five years after he signed his early works, like the La Massa theatre in Vilasar de Dalt.Soon, in 1881, he crossed the Atlantic with his son, for living in New York, where he revolutionize American architecture, building timbrel vaults, from the traditional architecture typical of Catalan and Valencian, shaped by the approach of lines, in the most cases, and using brick. They develop their architecture, reinventing the premises of American architecture, including aspects of traditional Spanish architecture in new public spaces that American society was demanding. This system would patent it as Guastavino vaulting system and this is how did in their company: Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company. They developped it in the Boston Public Library, the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park, the church of Saint Bartholomew in the 5th Avenue, the City of NY, decorating NY Metro stations, halls of Harvard, Yale and Columbia, and the Metropolitan of NY.

With this post, we recognize the career of the architect Rafael Guastavino to the benefit of the architecture. Only the architects, through their training and continuous reflection, are able to project the needs of the humans. It's not merely technical also artistic, practical and social.

It's Monday, a new week begins, for many is the start of your holiday and for other their return. While half of Spain is on the beach, we're in our command center dreaming of one of them .... Today's post will be dedicated to the figure of Alvar Aalto and his masterpiece, the City Hall of Saynatsalo in Finland. Considered one of the greatest of modern architecture, participated with Sert Barcelona in the CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture). In his travels through Europe with his wife, also an architect, left the Bauhaus influence, with Professor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Its architecture is focused on the concern for functionality as well as the creation of a whole, which is to accommodate not only the structure, but that it is closely related to their environment, and putting importance to the use of materials. This thought is the key to its architecture humanization.

The City Hall of Saynatsalo, a small Finnish island has just 2000 inhabitants, surrounded by forests and lakes and with a dispersed population, hence the importance of building a representative center that would unite all the neighbors. The project, called Curia, referenced to Roman urbanism, dates from 1948 and was proclaimed winner in the bulletin, the completion of works dating back to 1953.The handling of the scale, the relationship of the environment with the architecture, functions and use of materials, brick, wood and leather, humanizes the work that has a Municipal Hall on the east, two meeting rooms, five offices, five shops on the ground floor, seven houses for employees and a libraryon the south. It has a raised patio, which organizes the space. Around that, a gallery that promotes the connection between the interior and outdoors, providing great light to the first. Aalto's works are characterized by their volumes, cubic boxes in this case.

Finally, about the material, brick, both indoors and outdoors, is treated with its imperfections, burned or even damaged, which would be rejected in any other work, here gives expression. In the representative chamber black leather, so that acts of contrast with the wood. All the furniture was designed for marriage and Marie Gullichsen, founders of Artek company, among their products the Aalto vase, chair Paimo chair or Model No. 43.